Atari USA Operations, Have Filed for Bankruptcy In Order To Separate From its French Parent, A New Start For The Gaming Legend?

Atari USA Operations, Have Filed for Bankruptcy In Order To Separate From its French Parent, A New Start For The Gaming Legend?

The game console legend Atari Inc. and three of its affiliates filed petitions for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York late Jan. 20^th, 2013.

DOING WHAT?

So, first question is what was Atari still doing in business in the first place? Didn’t they make game consoles in the 1980’s? Since the early 2000s it has been closely tied to French company Infogrames, which changed its name to Atari S.A. in 2003 and in 2008 acquired all the gaming pioneer's American assets. The 31-year-old brand is still known worldwide for its pioneering role with video games such as "Pong" and "Asteroids," but Atari has been mired in financial problems for decades.

The latest CEO, Jim Wilson has been with the company since 2008, and has been CEO of the French parent company since 2010 which he has run out of New York. He has attempted to rebuild the company, which has just 40 employees in the U.S., by developing games for smartphones and the Web based on well-known properties.

Among these properties is the successful "greatest hits" compilation of arcade titles and an updated version of "Pong." He has also licensed the Atari logo for consumer products, a business that provides about 17% of the company's revenue.

WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?

The U.S. operations business has been improving over the year and make up the bulk of Atari S.A.'s business.

Atari S.A. has been profitable for the last two fiscal years, save for the effect of a money-losing French subsidiary, Eden Games, that has been up for sale. Before Jim Wilson came on board and took over as CEO, neither Atari S.A. nor Infogames had been profitable for about a decade.

These profits have been small ($11 million and $4 million, respectively, for the last two fiscal years) and revenue plummeted 34% in fiscal 2012 and 43% in fiscal 2011, but still that is a long way from bankruptcy – so what gives?

Well, Mr. Wilson and crew are hoping to break the American business free from French parent Atari S.A. and in the next few months find a buyer to take the company private. They hope to grow a modest business focused on digital and mobile platforms.

This is because the parent company has a bad financial situation by its near total reliance on the London financial company called BlueBay Asset Management. A $28-million credit facility with BlueBay lapsed Dec. 31, leaving Atari without the resources to release games currently in the works, including a real-money gambling title titled "Atari Casino."

Time to dump the French frogs, and take the USA business to new heights with a new owner, at least that is the plan.

It's not yet clear who might step up to buy Atari Inc., although Mr. Wilson will probably seek backers to help him keep control. It's also possible the company could be sold to another buyer, whole or in pieces.

Time will tell is Pong keeps rockin’!

My Favorite Business Apps for Android, iPhone and Blackberry – 5 Super Hot phone apps for 2013 – Tigertext, Box, Cardmunch, Catch and Evernote

Need to impress your boss with how tech savvy you are? Just want to increase your productivity? TechBizEconBlog presents these 5 apps that will help put you on top of your business game and make your mobile life much easier and more secure:

Tigertext – Secure text messaging

Price = Free ($10 a month for PRO version)

OS = Android, iOS (iPhone), and BlackBerry

http://www.tigertext.com/

Tigertext started out as a simple way to send text messages that self-delete, but it has become a popular enterprise app once companies started discovering it. Need to meet SOX and HIPAA compliance – or just wanted to make sure your employees didn’t lose sensitive information when their phones were left on the table at Starbuck’s – then Tigertext is just the app for your business. Messages are sent on a private and secure network, and the messages auto delete after a set amount of time, or by command.

Easy to use, just like regular SMS and text messages, but secure enough to meet SOX and HIPAA compliance.

CardMunch, for keeping track of business cards

Price = Free

OS = iOS (iPhone)

http://www.cardmunch.com/

Got a stack of business cards? No problem, CardMunch allows users to convert business cards to address book contacts, and then add those contacts as connections on LinkedIn. Just snap a photo of a business card, upload it to the service, and the information will be automatically added to your phone. There’s no need to hang on to the paper business card after that, relief at last!
 

Evernote: Search scanned documents

Price = Free

OS = Android, iOS (iPhone), Blackberry, Windows Phone and Web

http://evernote.com/

Evernote’s goal is to help you remember everything, and it does this by organizing and tagging your most important notes. The feature that makes Evernote super smart is its ability to search any scanned file or document in your library.

Box, for storing documents online

Price = Free

OS = Android, iOS (iPhone), Blackberry, Windows Phone and Web

https://www.box.com/

If you work in a corporate box, then you need to be using Box. It touts itself as a cloud service for the enterprise, giving you an easy way to back up and share all your documents online and view them on any device. We love Box’s commitment to developing apps for all platforms, not just the most popular ones. You get 5 GB of storage for free with Box, but there are several paid plans if you need more.

 
Catch is a fun way to take voice, photo, and text notes.

Price = Free

OS = Android and iOS (iPhone)

https://catch.com/

Catch helps you capture your most important ideas so you never miss anything. You can create voice, photo, and text notes, online and offline. It’s incredibly easy to share checklists to collaborate with others, too. Users can protect notes with a four-digit PIN for added security.


Disclaimer: None of these apps or companies paid me to mention them; this article is of my own free will and opinion.

If The Best Thing At CES Was An Electronic Skateboard, Is Innovation In Consumer Electronics Dead?

I was looking through all the reports from the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), and the thing that struck me, was how little innovation there was the year.

For me, the most interesting thing was the Zboard, an Electronic skateboard.

That is a sad statement, and shows that for 2013 consumers can expect marginal improvements in various smartphones, tv's and tablets.

CES is technically a hardware show, but it was clear the App's and smartphone and tablet software was where the innovation was occurring.

For many consumer electronic products, the hardware is generic and it is the software that is the star.

I guess we will have to wait till next to see if innovation will rise from the dead and reanimate consumer electronics.

FireEye is now one of the hottest start-up's in Enterprise security, and may revolutionize the industry with it's ground braking technologies.

FireEye is now one of the hottest start-up's in Enterprise security, and may revolutionize the industry with it's ground braking technologies.

This is because FireEye solves two of the hardest and most complex security problems, and does so with a simple hardware/software server appliance.

The first is ZDA - Zero Day Attacks - These type of hacking attacks take advantage of software holes that the software vendor hasn't yet learned about. In other words, ones that they've had zero days to fix. These are important because they are holes in security they may be open for a long time, since depending on the software vendor it may take them weeks once they know about the hole, or years.

Next, FireEye deals with APT - Advanced Persistent Threats - These are a series of attacks by organized hackers determined to get into a particular network, they want in and will keep at it until they do get in. These are the most dangerious, because these people have a real determination to get in and do damage and theft of data.

FireEye does this by finding these attacks by taking an extra fraction of a second to run the suspicious code or opening suspicious emails in a protected area to see what they do.

Exciting, so much so that the company of $100 million in reviune, just landed $50 million in new funding. This new funding brings FireEye's total funding to $85.5 million. The company is on track for an IPO, maybe as soon as this year.

The new CEO Dave DeWalt joined the company last November. He'd previously been the CEO of antivirus software maker McAfee, where he led the company through a turnaround to its acquisition by Intel.

He was rumored to be in the running to succeed Paul Otellini as Intel's CEO, and was approached with some 40 other CEO jobs since he left McAfee 18 months ago from "large public companies to smaller companies," he said in a recent interview with Business Insider.

Although FireEye has annual revenues of about $100 million now, DeWalt argues that it's worth the $1.25 billion valuation because it's  on track to double its revenues this year. It now employs 500 people and will use the new funds to expand internationally.

It will be interesting to see how FireEye shakes up the Enterprise Security industry.

http://www.fireeye.com/

Nvidia is Making the Next Big Portable Gaming System - Project Shield

Today at CES, Nvidia showed it's own consumer product - Project Shield, an Nvidia-brand handheld game device with a dedicated 5-inch display that will also stream games wirelessly to your television.

Until today, Nvidia made parts that go inside gadgets other manufactures build, but with the new Tegra 4-powered handheld gaming system with both an integrated controller and screen, all that has changed.

Nvidia says the device, nicknamed "Project Shield," will pack a 10-hour battery life, audio quality on par with a Jambox, a console-quality controller (bumpers, triggers, analog sticks, and a d-pad), and it runs Android (like Apple would let them play iOS games). In the back are plenty of ports: HDMI, micro-USB, microSD, and audio-out.

The integrated screen is a 5-inch, 720p touchscreen and the entire package is about the size of an Xbox 360 controller. This is a serious shot at not only Android gaming, but all mobile gaming, and even the likes of Wii U.

Project Shield (still, think it is a stupid codename) is a mobile set top box and computer, capable of playing 4k movies to a full 4k TV via HDMI, hopping around Facebook, multitasking with your music in the background, and pretty much everything else you'd want from a modern tablet or smartphone. It is not just a Android Gameboy, it is a lot more and it is powered with nVidia graphics.

It does a lot of things that other devices can do, but it puts them all in one little package.

Now all we need is for more Android games, and ones that are really worth playing.

Samsung Will Widen the Smartphone Sales Gap with Apple

Apple Inc is expected to fall further behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in global smartphone sales in 2013, with Samsung expecting 35 percent growth, helped by a broad new line of products lineup.

Apple is not going to be just sitting still.

It is rumored that Apple might roll out a smaller, cheaper "iPhone Mini" in 2014 in order to grab market share by targeting lower-end smartphones users.

"We expect Samsung to slightly extend its lead over Apple this year because of its larger multitier product portfolio," Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, said in an e-mail interview with Reuters.

Global smartphone shipments will jump 27 percent to 875 million this year, slowing from last year's torrid 41 percent pace as growth is easing in many key markets such as North America, China, the developed economies of Asia, and Western Europe, Mawston said.

Samsung is forecast to sell 290 million smartphones in 2013, up from a projected 215 million in 2012 - this according to Strategy Analytics.

By comparison, Apple's smartphone sales are projected to reach 180 million this year, up 33 percent from last year, slightly trailing Samsung's 35 percent increase.

This will give Samsung a 33 percent share of the 2013 smartphone market, up from last year's estimated 31 percent, while Apple will hold 21 percent, versus last year's 20 percent.

In the 1970's we had the 'Oil Gap', but in 2013 the gap everyone is talking about is the 'Smartphone Sales Gap'.

SLICING UP THE PIE

Samsung Electronics is the largest and most valuable company in Asia, and Apple is the world's most valuable technology company - have been battleing fiercely in the global mobile device market, which both companies dominate. In a twist of humor though, Samsung is also a supplier to Apple.

In April, Samsung may launch the Galaxy S IV, a new version of its flagship smartphone, as well as the Galaxy Note III phablet (phone tablet) and a series of other new smartphones over the course of 2013.

"Samsung plays in more segments and this should enable it to capture more volume than Apple (assuming Apple does not launch an 'iPhone Mini' this year)," Mawston said.

Brian J. White, a researcher at Topeka Capital Markets, on Wednesday raised the possibility that Apple may launch a smaller and lower-priced iPhone - the iPhone Mini - to further penetrate markets such as China and India.

"Apple will launch the next iPhone, the iPhone 5S, in May or June, and offer more options in screen sizes. This would eventually open up the possibility for the iPhone Mini", he said.

But Mawston said the iPhone Mini was not expected to hit the market until after this year.

"We think Apple will have to launch an 'iPhone Mini' at some point over the next three years to address the hundreds of millions of prepaid users worldwide that cannot afford the current iPhone," he said.

"The iPhone 5 is growing fast and profitably right now, so there is little incentive for Apple to launch an 'iPhone Mini' this year.

"We expect the iPhone Mini to be more likely next year, in 2014 when ... Apple will be forced to discover fresh growth streams," he said.

Samsung Electronics, once a distant second place in the smartphone market, has quickly surpassed Apple as the world's largest smartphone maker.

Fiscal Cliff Averted, Stock Market Responds with a 200 Point Opening Gain

Doomsayers are sad today, as the incompetent US Congress passed a bill late-night fiscal-cliff deal to avert economic disaster.

U.S. stock markets, which rallied more than 1 percent on Dec. 31 in anticipation of a deal, were off to the races Wednesday morning, with futures on the broad stock indices up more than 1 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average surged 200 points.

Good news for the US economy, but bad news for the people of the US, since this real problems of the deficit and the accompanying problem of taking money out of the economy to pay the $16 Trillion national debt has been once again kicked down the road.

Howdy!

Welcome to Tech Biz Econ Blog.

It was going to be just Tech Biz Blog, but someone has already been taken that name, so I added Econ since I will be writing about how the economy effect technology business.

Look forward to any feedback and comments as I post articles.